Solved Active partition changing safety

[Cabinhook]

I have a few niggly windows 7 system problems unable to fix. I was doing a disc management check and there are 2 partitions, one for system recovery and the usual C disc partition with everything on it. I noticed that the recovery partition is marked as the active one. Is that correct or is it possible to change to the C drive as the active one without stuffing up. If things did go astray in changing it over how would I recover it again. The screen capture shows the status, thanks Jeff

 

[Night Hawk]

You want the C primary as the one seen as being active. Somehow the roles got switched there!

There are three methods to see the C primary remarked again explained in one guide for this to look over. One requires a 3rd party drive partitioning program like Partition Wizard. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html

 

[gregrocker]

Some OEM's mark Recovery active so it will boot from its hotkey. Unless you changed it then I'd leave it alone.

However if you decide to do what most tech enthusiasts do and get the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 then you can make your Recovery disks first and delete all partitions during the reinstall.

 

[Layback Bear]

I noticed that the recovery partition is empty. 100% free space. Is that normal.

 

[Cabinhook]

Thanks, I'm not too computer savvy but I know how to mark the C drive as active but if the machine wont boot afterwards where do I go from there.

 

[Cabinhook]

yes I thought that it was strange also that the recovery partition was 100% free, how can that be ?

 

[gregrocker]

Recovery files are hidden. There's at least the boot files there. You can see them by unhiding System and Hidden files in Control Panel>Folder Options>View.

Why do you want to change the boot partition to C? You might be removing Recovery's ability to boot when needed. Or did you change the Active flag to Recovery and wish to undo it now?

If you want to get rid of the Recovery Partition then make the Recovery disks first and we will give you the exact steps.

Otherwise you are making trouble for yourself for what reason?

 

[Cabinhook]

With my limited know how I naturally thought that C should be the main drive and that the recovery partition is just for that purpose only. I have had some niggly problems ie backup and restore no good, no info in the boot section of msconfig, slow boot and shutdown, plus hibernation stopped working

 

[gregrocker]

Have you considered getting the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7
without the corrupting factory bloatware and duplicate utilties which have better versions built into Win7? Most tech enthusiasts do this.

At least I would Clean Up Factory Bloatware to regain some performance and get you more familar with Win7, as well as these steps to Optimize Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums.

Then if any problems persist try working through these Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7

 

[Layback Bear]

Thanks for the info Greg.

 

[gregrocker]

It's somewhat unusual that there's no System flag on Recovery showing that the boot files do in fact reside there. However it's not enough to move Active flag if you didn't move it there yourself.

But just to be sure I'd boot into Win7 DVD or System Repair Disk to run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times to see if it finds some things to fix and plants the System flag on the Active partition where it should be. This may help with some of the boot-related issues.

 

[Cabinhook]

Thanks, I have already done this to no avail along with disc check, disc cleanup and system file checker. I'm now at the stage where because windows 8 is now available I'm thinking of upgrading to it and hope it sorts out all the crap.

 

[gregrocker]

You ran Startup Repair from disk three separate times with reboot in between each?

Just checkin.

 

[Cabinhook]

I did it from the recovery computer repair option on the hard disc ie f8 prior to boot then repair computer then startup repair which would not complete itself due to errors

 

[gregrocker]

Better to run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times from Win7 DVD or System Repair Disk
since onboard System files may be corrupted. That's why I specified the disks.

Run SFC /SCANNOW Command now to check.

 

[Night Hawk]

You may have a problem with the system restore capability or at least the OEM's installation of the recovery tools when running into Startup repair errors. That should fly through and restart the system in only a matter of seconds when no problems are present.

A repair cd you can burn and boot up from would have the Startup repair tool as well as command prompt options. You can boot from one you burn or even borrow a 7 dvd for the same edition while the repair cd burned by that Windows installation would be advised to repair the boot.

Now the clean everything up and eliminate "Bloatwares" idea works as long as you are familiar with looking up all the drivers for everything once a clean install of Windows is seen to. That means looking the WiFi as well as video, sound, and chipset drivers for that model at the main support. It's not that much different then doing the same with a Vista laptop which I had to do a few time recently due to a new larger drive replacing the old and cleaning malwares off one older laptop! (not to mention the 7 laptop that also saw a scam ware infection cleaned off!)

The one way to view the 100mb System Reserved boot partition with a custom install of 7 however onto a raw drive where the Windows installer creates that second small partition was to restore a full system image onto a second drive and then assigning a drive letter to the image's 100mb to see it added as a new logical drive. On any OEM system that is the last thing you want.

Better off booting live from a Linux live disk to see just where the Boot folder and Bootmgr file is located. Mounting the hidden recovery partition as a logical drive can leave it exposed to some forms of malwares it wouldn't generally see. Accidental deletion of boot files could be another possible concern. Burning recovery disks and creating system image backups are the best moves when you know everything is working at 100%!

 

[Cabinhook]

Thanks, this is getting a bit too deep for me but I have made considerable progress by uninstalling all the accessory programs put on as extras by Toshiba then only reinstalling the ones that I really use and as a result everything is now almost back to normal with the exception of windows backup and restore which doesnt work. in that regard I have downloaded Todo and that does the job fine.

 

[Night Hawk]

That suggests you have deeper problems with the preinstall being seen there. You may have to get busy creating a recovery disk and even make a usb installation key(goes a little faster and smoother) and plan a fresh install folowing the guide greg posted earlier to get a fully working copy of Windows running.

The backup tools especially the option for creating a full system are generally found reliable unless there's a problem. A clean install of course while leaving the factory recvery partition intact can clean up the C volume as well as eliminate any bloatwares easy enough. From there you simply look up the drivers needed.

Once any Windows install becomes buggy the solution used here would be simply nuking the present C primary entirely even on the laptops I cleaned up when those were trashed by malwares. Before making backups with any program as far as the OS side having things in prime condition is what you would want. The Windows Easy Transfer tool can usually restore user files and program settings once everything is back on fresh again.

Another thing to suggest here would be running a diagnostics tool on the main drive itself to see if that is starting to see bad sectors which can cause a variety of issues. The hard drives in laptops generally end up taking a bit more pounding overall then any 3 1/2" on a desktop and tend to wear faster at times.

Scheduling the Disk Check tool to run on the next startup can also be a help to solve problems when errors are present on the C volume. To open up an elevated command prompt go to Start>All Programs>Accessories and right cilck on the command prompt icon. You want to select the run as admin option and type in "chkdsk /r". Once you press enter you will need to answer the yes or no message with Y to see the tool scheduled.

You likely have seen that before if you had an improper shutdown where you pressed a key to cancel the Disk Check tool when Windows was first starting up. This time you would want it to run and hopefully fix what it can. If the laptop has a Samsung or Hitachi drive in it the Sea Tools would be one hard drive diagnostics option to run. SeaTools for Windows | Seagate

Hitachi and Samsung still have their own tools of course with a list of the top 6 free ones seeing those and the Sea Tools included at Top 6 Free Hard Drive Diagnostic Softwares - Data Recovery Blog